Lowest Quotes (10 quotes)
As I hurtled through space, one thought kept crossing my mind—every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder.
Seen on the Internet, but Webmaster believes the wording is not verbatim, but is a shortened, rewording of the longer quote at launch time. seen elsewhere on this page. The earliest example of the shortened quote found by Webmaster is as an epigraph in Philip Kaplan, Big Wings: The Largest Aeroplanes Ever Built (2006), 92.
Every individual alive today, even the very highest, is to be derived in an unbroken line from the first and lowest forms.
In Heredity (1892), Vol. 1, 161. As cited in James C. Fernald Scientific Side-lights: Illustrating Thousands of Topics by Selections from Standard Works of the Masters of Science Throughout the World (1903), 394.
He who designs an unsafe structure or an inoperative machine is a bad Engineer; he who designs them so that they are safe and operative, but needlessly expensive, is a poor Engineer, and … he who does the best work at lowest cost sooner or later stands at the top of his profession.
From Address on 'Industrial Engineering' at Purdue University (24 Feb 1905). Reprinted by Yale & Towne Mfg Co of New York and Stamford, Conn. for the use of students in its works.
I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts—all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.
His reply to the question, often asked, “When you were sitting in that capsule listening to the count-down, how did you feel?” From speech announcing his Senate retirement (20 Feb 1997). As recorded in 'A Genuine American Hero Says He'll Retire', Tributes Delivered in Congress: John Glenn (1998) in U.S. Government Printing Office, U.S. Congress: Senate, Vol 105, Issue 34, 52. (A similar reference to “the lowest bidder on a government contract” has also been attributed to Alan Shepard.)
It is the constant aim of the mathematician to reduce all his expressions to their lowest terms, to retrench every superfluous word and phrase, and to condense the Maximum of meaning into the Minimum of language.
In Address (22 Feb 1877) for Commemoration Day at Johns Hopkins University. Published as a pamphlet, and reprinted in The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester: (1870-1883) (1909), Vol. 3, 72-73.
Let U = the University, G = Greek, and P = Professor, Then GP = Greek Professor; let this be reduced to its lowest terms and call the result J.
From an essay concerning the Regius Professorship of Greek, The New Method of Evaluating as Applied to π (1865), as quoted and cited in Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898), 159. Collingwood explains parenthetically, after "result J", “[i.e., Jowett]”, which was not in the original publication of “The New Method…”.
The Engineer is one who, in the world of physics and applied sciences, begets new things, or adapts old things to new and better uses; above all, one who, in that field, attains new results in the best way and at lowest cost.
From Address on 'Industrial Engineering' at Purdue University (24 Feb 1905). Reprinted by Yale & Towne Mfg Co of New York and Stamford, Conn. for the use of students in its works.
The solution of problems is one of the lowest forms of mathematical research, … yet its educational value cannot be overestimated. It is the ladder by which the mind ascends into higher fields of original research and investigation. Many dormant minds have been aroused into activity through the mastery of a single problem.
With co-editor J. M. Colaw, Editorial introducing the first issue of The American Mathematical Monthly (Jan 1894), 1, No. 1, 2.
The study of Nature is intercourse with the highest mind. You should never trifle with Nature. At her lowest her works are the works of the highest powers, the highest something in the universe, in whichever way we look at it… This is the charm of Study from Nature itself; she brings us back to absolute truth wherever we wander.
Lecture at a teaching laboratory on Penikese Island, Buzzard's Bay. Quoted from the lecture notes by David Starr Jordan, Science Sketches (1911), 147. Last sentence included with the quote in Peter Haring Judd (ed.), Affection: Ninety Years of Family Letters, 1850s-1930s: Haring, White, Griggs, Judd Families of New York and Waterbury, Connecticut (206), 102, where it is also noted that this comes from what must have been one of his last lectures since Agassiz died shortly thereafter.
To mean understandings, it is sufficient honour to be numbered amongst the lowest labourers of learning; but different abilities must find different tasks. To hew stone, would have been unworthy of Palladio; and to have rambled in search of shells and flowers, had but ill suited with the capacity of Newton.
From 'Numb. 83, Tuesday, January 1, 1750', The Rambler (1756), Vol. 2, 154. (Italian architect Palladio, 1509-80, is widely considered the most influential in the history of Western architecture.)
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) --
Carl Sagan
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